


The Looking Glass

by uchiha_s



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:31:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uchiha_s/pseuds/uchiha_s
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fred and George leave a cake that says 'eat me' in the library. Hermione gives in to her curiosity and finds that her daydreams are even darker than her reality.</p><p>2012 Secret Santa Tomione Fic Exchange - gift for The Revenant</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Looking Glass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rivetingiknow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivetingiknow/gifts), [Tomione_Forum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tomione_Forum/gifts).



> Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros. Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**The Looking Glass**

**for The Revenant**

********  
Hermione was getting tired. Tired of her dreams, to be precise. But it was more complicated than that, in fact.  
  
It had all started with those bloody Weasley twins.  
  
Ron beginning to date Lavender had been a low point for her — lower than she had admitted to anyone. After all those years of push-and-pull, tug-of-lust with Ron, she had sort of thought that they might finally move beyond such immaturity and just simply admit that they fancied each other. Even beyond that, her pride had been hurt. It would have been easier if no one had known about her feelings for Ron, but everyone — even Neville, for Merlin’s sake — had sensed that she had been implicitly rejected, in Ron’s choosing Lavender, and the insipid looks of sympathy she was getting from everyone were enough to drive her up a wall.  
  
So, dealing with all of that nonsense hadn’t been doing her much good — pile on the stress of school, Voldemort, and, well, teenage hormones, and there she had been when the twins had found her at four in the morning, curled up in a ball in the library, trying very hard to cry in the hopes that it might relieve some of her emotional turmoil.  
  
She hadn’t heard them, of course. Those bastards could be quite cunning and clever when they fancied it, and of course she hadn’t been listening for anyone because, well, who in their right mind would be in the Hogwarts library at such an hour, besides her? (Not that she had been in her right mind, of course.)  
  
Suddenly they had appeared over her, silhouetted by the candle she had left on the table.  
  
“Well well well,” began one of them, peering down at her and cocking his head to the side.  
  
“What do we,” began the other, “have here,” they finished together.  
  
“Oh, sod off,” Hermione muttered wetly, wiping at her running nose with the sleeve of her jumper and trying to move out of the foetal position. “You’re not even supposed to be in Hogwarts, you know.”  
  
“Knew you were a morning person,” said George (Fred?) fondly. Hermione stood up and made to push past them, but one grabbed her, looking, for once, genuinely concerned. “Say, are you crying?”  
  
“No, it’s just raining on my face,” she said flatly, before wrenching her arm from his hand and turning back to her books. Behind her, Fred and George looked between each other in shock.  
  
Had Hermione just made a joke?  
  
“Must be losing it,” remarked Fred, shaking his head. George was nodding enthusiastically as they watched her fail at shoving her books in her satchel and then attempt to Hex them.  
  
“Going absolutely nutter,” agreed George.  
  
“Well, at least you two are having a good time,” she said bitterly, giving up and slumping into her seat. She could not bear to look them in the eye; they might see just how upset she was, and her pride really could not handle much more of this pity.  
  
To her surprise, the boys sat down on either side of her in one swift movement, each setting a hand on her shoulder. Hermione narrowed her eyes in suspicion.  
  
“It’s about Ronniekins, isn’t it?” they asked in unison. Hermione rolled her eyes.  
  
“Oh, honestly. I’m just a bit stressed and just wanted a moment to myself. Really.”  
  
“Just needed a sec to get away from it all, eh?” George had a knowing gleam in his eyes that was upsetting Hermione. She knew that look, and she did not like it, not one bit.  
  
“Ever wish you could just escape? Live in a fantasy for a bit?”  
  
“No,” she sputtered. “That is so illogical. How would that solve anything?”  
  
“Wouldn’t solve a damn thing — but some things are unsolvable, are they not?” pointed out Fred. Hermione snorted.  
  
“Nothing is without a solution,” she proclaimed, though as she said it, she felt her own resolve and certainty waver as she considered all of the problems in her life, stacked up around her like books on these neverending shelves. “Well, maybe some things are,” she added softly. “I-I do wish I could escape sometimes,” she admitted, hiding her face in her hands. “With all of this talk of Voldemort, and Harry acting so strangely, and Ron — well, you know.” She glanced at them; they were both looking at her with unusually sympathetic looks.  
  
“It is hard, isn’t it? Mum’s going off her rocker with worry,” agreed George, looking away. He sighed. “Well, like you said — daydreaming won’t solve anything, will it?” He took something out of his pocket; it appeared to be a small biscuit, labeled, ‘eat me.’  
  
“What is that,” she demanded, holding out her hand, all former melancholy cast aside. “George, I’ll not let you sell suspicious biscuits to first years — you can’t experiment on them; it’s unethical not to mention incredibly dangerous —”  
  
“Who said we were experimenting on anyone?” said Fred innocently, slinging an arm round her. “That’s for us, love.”  
  
Hermione wrinkled her nose as she looked down at the biscuit, lying innocently on the table. She pressed her lips together in a hopeless attempt to stop herself from letting her curiosity get the better of her, but the curiosity won out.  
  
“...What does it do, exactly?”  
  
“Like you said: daydreaming solves nothing. But it does feel good, doesn’t it?” George held up the tiny biscuit in a freckled hand. “Totally safe, only lasts an hour, no funny side effects — it merely totally immerses you in a daydream.”  
  
“...And you’ve tried it?”  
  
The twins looked between each other before offering Hermione matching toothy grins.  
  
“Of course we have,” they chorused together. Then, unexpectedly, they stood up. “Well, we ought to be going. We just came by to drop off Ginny’s birthday present.” At this they looked all too pleased with themselves as they sauntered out leisurely. Hermione blinked in surprise, watching them leave, and it wasn’t until the door had shut that she realized they had left their little biscuit on the table.  
  
Right in front of her.  
  
For a bit, she was able to do some work.  Her peace lasted about three minutes before the cake began niggling at her. Eventually she grew so frustrated that she hurled it at the opposing wall of books, where it magically bounced back and landed on the table again. Hermione glowered at it.  
  
Why was it so tempting?  
  
Perhaps it was due to her lack of sleep. All she had been wanting to do lately was to lose herself to the oblivion of sleep, but it hadn’t happened: every time she had gone to bed, her mind, so keen and clever and so very overactive, had begun to throw all sorts of troublesome thoughts at her, thus ensuring that she couldn’t fall asleep.  
  
Perhaps, had she not been so stressed, upset, and sleep-deprived, she might have never eaten that bloody cake.  
  
But, unfortunately, she had been incredibly stressed, upset, and sleep-deprived, and pretty bloody curious to top it off.  
  
So she ate the cake.  
  
At first, nothing had happened. After a few minutes, she simply slumped back in her chair, staring listlessly out the dark window at the Hogwarts grounds. Her tired eyes were playing tricks on her, and she kept imagining she saw shapes, figures, moving in the darkness. She scowled. Well, probably, things were moving in the darkness — after all, all sorts of Magical Creatures existed in the Forbidden Forest. But the thing was, they really looked like... people. Like dark wizards, moving around in the darkness, approaching the castle to take Harry away and kill him...!  
  
Okay, she was clearly losing it, and this stupid cake was doing nothing. With a heavy sigh, Hermione shoved her books into her bag — successfully this time — and stomped out of the library, not even caring if she got in trouble.  
  
The corridor looked different at night — of course, it was dark, and she was exhausted — but no, it really looked different. Perhaps vision disturbances were an unfortunate side effect of the little cake? She rubbed at her eyes, noticing that there were many doors along the corridor that she was nearly positive had not been there on her way here. Perhaps she had taken a wrong turn...?  
  
She began to panic. Was she losing her mind? Maybe she was. Maybe those two had not been Fred and George, but in fact had been Dark wizards masquerading as the twins using Polyjuice to gain her trust, and had drugged her so she could not help to keep Harry safe, and were now on their way to kill Harry, and maybe the twins were already dead, and--- oh Merlin.  
  
She sat down on the floor and let out a whimper. Everything was spinning, and this was all horribly wrong. Had she really just been hoodwinked by Dark wizards?  
  
She had to stop them from killing Harry.  
  
But how to get to Gryffindor tower? She cast point me but it was useless; her wand merely spun around in her hand. Her panic rising, Hermione began to shake and push at doors at random; they were all locked and for some reason, alohomora wasn’t working on them. Her hands were beginning to shake with adrenaline.  
  
“Help! Someone! Help!” she shrieked, but her voice wasn’t working either. Had their poison affected her vocal chords as well? She struggled to think of a potion that might have all of these effects, but her mind was so sluggish... thoughts were coming so slowly and yet her mind was almost moving too fast. She dropped to her knees in an effort to see through the keyhole.  
  
A completely unexpected sight greeted her.  
  
Bellatrix Lestrange, of all people, was sauntering through the Great Hall in an absurd bloodred gown, her jet black wild curls trailing down behind her. She threw her head back and let out a cackle that ran straight down Hermione’s spine.  
  
“I smell Mudblood,” she said in a singsong voice as she turned to look straight at the door. Hermione ducked backwards, her chest heaving as she gasped for air that would not come.  
  
She scrambled to her feet, leaving her bag and clutching her apparently useless wand in her clammy fist as she sprinted down the corridor, skidding to a halt when she saw a door that was ajar. Something fluffy and white disappeared through it, and without thinking, she dove after it.  
  
Somehow, the door had led out onto the grounds. She landed on grass wet with dew from the night, and was surrounded by the oft-eerie night noises of Hogwarts. Panting, she hastily got to her feet as she watched the fluffy white thing bound away. On a whim, she hurried after it. She couldn’t see what it was, but something was compelling her to go after it — perhaps it was one of the Death Eaters in Animagus form, though she could not picture any of the Death Eaters having something so... fluffy... as their Animagus.  
  
She came to the edge of the Forbidden Forest and hesitated, preparing herself. She strained her ears and froze before ducking into the bramble when she heard voices. One was a sensuous baritone; it was the voice of a tall, confident man, she somehow knew. The other was an all too familiar drawl that filled her with nausea.  
  
Lucius Malfoy was here.  
  
“She has followed me here, my lord. . . she is hiding in the bushes now.”  
  
Even in her compromised state, Hermione could piece together what was going on. She trembled as she tried to decide whether to attack or flee, but it was no use.  
  
“Oh, do stay for tea, dear Miss Granger. . .” said the sensuous voice leisurely. An invisible force grasped her by her ankles and dragged her through the brush and bramble, tearing her uniform and skin. Hermione shrieked and wriggled and attempted to perform a number of rather dark Hexes that she should not have known, technically, but her wand was knocked out of her hand and she found herself sitting in a clearing, with two dark silhouettes standing over her.  
  
Malfoy’s wand tip ignited, revealing him slowly transforming from a white rabbit and back into himself again. The sight was nauseating; to see the whiskers shrink back inward as his nose changed from pink to white and elongated; to see his limbs stretching as the rabbit fur shrank into his skin and clothing.  
  
The wandlight just barely cast enough light on the other man to reveal angular, handsome features, dark hair, a pristine waistcoat, and, oddest of all, a top hat perched jauntily on his head of thick dark wavy hair. His features were the loveliest she had ever seen, but his eyes were cold as ice. Their gazes locked and though her skin was prickled with goosebumps, an unfamiliar warmth was spreading from her belly.  
  
“Cream? Sugar?” he asked. With a wave of his wand, a silver tray bearing two painted teacups and a matching teapot hovered in the air.  
  
“Really, I’m fine,” she stammered, attempting to get to her feet. The man’s expression darkened.  
  
“Do sit down —”  
  
Hermione dodged a jet of magic; from the way her skin tingled as it grazed her skin, she could only guess it had been a very dark, very powerful Hex. She disappeared into the bushes again, snatched her wand, and ran as fast as her legs could carry her as she gasped and panted, her lungs burning. She finally exploded out of the woods and fell into the wet grass, her mind buzzing.  
  
Could this possibly be Fred and George’s stupid cake’s doing? Could this possibly be a dream? The fall had certainly hurt, and it had felt real. She could not even pinpoint where reality had ended and the dream had begun.  
  
If it were the cake’s fault, well, she’d be having a word with those two, for certain. She could grudgingly admit that this was really incredible magic, but as with all of Fred and George’s magical inventions, the use of it was rather terrifying. If she, one of the brightest witches of her age (thank you very much), had gotten confused — well, then what would happen to any normal person? It wasn’t like this dream was enjoyable. A daydream was supposed to be fun, it was supposed to be nice. Merlin, had her life really become so desolate that even her daydreams were weird, disturbing, and depressing?  
  
Hermione brushed herself off as she rose to her feet. Well, she had had enough of this bloody daydream. She could be doing work right now. She saw Bellatrix and Malfoy enough in her normal nightmares; she didn’t need to see them in her magically-induced ones as well.  
  
“Okay,” she said loudly, staring up at the crescent moon. “I’m done. Had enough. Finite incantatem.”  
  
The effect was unanticipated: the crescent moon widened as two stars appeared next to it, rendering it a rather feline face. Suddenly, the moon seemed unnaturally close. Hermione scowled. How did one end this blasted daydream? Oh, if she really had to endure some set time of this nonsense, Fred and George were so paying for this — well, scratch that, they were going to be paying either way. She crossed her arms over her chest. “And who might you be?”  
  
“Well, I tried to introduce myself,” said the moon-cat in an eerily familiar sensuous baritone, “but you stormed off. Tsk tsk, such a temper.”  
  
“You again,” Hermione sighed. “Look, I really have other things to do right now — I don’t have time to muck around in some silly daydream.”  
  
The moon-cat tilted his head to the side, questioningly — or rather, he tilted his face.  
  
“Some silly daydream? If this is a daydream, I must say that your daydreams are rather . . . odd. Nearly as odd as mine.”  
  
“Thank you,” she said flatly. “I couldn’t have determined that myself.”  
  
“Were you hoping for something different?”  
  
“Yes,” she said exasperatedly. “I was hoping I might get to live in a daydream for a bit where I am with Ro — well, with this boy I like — and it’s all romantic and I’ve got all I ever wanted. My life right now is... not so satisfactory.” She let out a huff. The moon-cat was watching her intently. Somehow, it propelled her to divulge more. He seemed like he really wanted to listen to her. How often did she feel that from anybody, let alone a man?  
  
“You’re lonely,” he remarked. Hermione nodded, rubbing fiercely at her eyes. The statement was so true, so painfully true, and it seemed like no one cared that she was lonely. She didn’t often dwell on her own loneliness, but perhaps that was why she was daydreaming about it? She sat in the grass.  
  
“I am,” she admitted with a sniffle, “and not just for friends — I want to be with someone. Well, not just anyone. I want to be with Ron! We belong together, it’s so terribly obvious, and instead he just runs off with Lavender Brown!”  
  
The moon-cat crept closer, as the stars and moon reassembled themselves to a man’s face. It was the top-hat man. He stepped down out of the sky and landed gently on the grass in front of her.  
  
“Any man worth having can see that you’re far superior to Lavender Brown any day,” he said softly. Hermione opened her mouth, unable to form words due to his loveliness and the fact that he had just stepped down out of the sky!!! But it didn’t matter, because there was then an impossibly loud thwack that seemed to fill the entire world, followed by a scream just as loud.  
  
The top-hat man sighed. “That’ll be Queen Bellatrix. Florean didn’t make her sundae just right, I’ll wager, and she likes to play croquet with him when that happens.”  
  
“... That seems hardly befitting of Bellatrix,” Hermione muttered in shock. There couldn’t be a more benign punishment. The man’s eyes glittered with amusement.  
  
“When I say with Florean, I mean using him.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
Well, at least some things stayed the same from reality to dreamland.  
  
“You have to go now,” said the man, holding out his hand. She took it as he helped her to her feet. “But I’ll be waiting for you here. . .”  
  
Hermione blinked. He was gone, and suddenly it was much colder. She looked up. The moon was indeed a crescent, but now it was quite where it belonged. There was a rustling, and Hermione looked up to see Filch slinking toward her, cackling, Mrs. Norris on his heels.  
  
Bugger.  
  


***

 ** ******  
After that first dream, Hermione had wasted no time in sending Fred and George a particularly scathing owl. She had only held back on sending a Howler because she was out of the paper needed for them, and she didn’t feel like waiting for her order to come in. She couldn’t admit to Harry and Ron why she had gotten detention, of course — it was simply too embarrassing. For days, she wondered about the daydream: if she really had ‘woken up’ from it outside, then had she also crawled through Hogwarts, screaming for help and banging on the walls?  
  
The humiliation was almost enough to kill her curiosity about the top-hat moon-cat man.  
  
Almost. But not quite.  
  
Her willpower had lasted all of three days before she had owled Fred and George again, demanding that they send her their ‘product’ before distributing it to Hogwarts students. She had only been asking for one, really, to ‘inspect’ it, but cheeky as always, the twins had sent her a box of twenty-four, wrapped up in shiny paper and trimmed with shiny bows, and had even included a little card with it.  
  
That night, after everyone had gone to bed, Hermione had slipped out of her dorm. With the aid of a few choice charms to keep her hidden from sight (she reasoned that it would be worse if the students got ahold of these cakes without her properly inspecting them than if she broke a few tiny rules. She was a prefect, after all, and she was just doing her job) she slipped out of Gryffindor tower. She had decided that the grounds would be the safest place to test them. Yes, it was cold, but her burning curiosity would keep her warm (also, a warming charm wouldn’t go amiss, either).  
  
And soon, she had returned to her dreamland. The first night, she hadn’t been able to find top-hat man; she had, however, nearly been killed during a rowdy game of croquet with Queen Bellatrix, and she had managed to torment Bunny Lucius by changing his fur different colors from behind a tree. It was oddly satisfying, to wreak havoc on her enemies, and she supposed this was why her mind had taken her to this sort of daydream, rather than a more conventional one.  
  
The next night, she turned Lavender Brown into a pig.  
  
The night after that, she had been hiding in the rose bushes in the Great Hall, watching Bellatrix attempt to play croquet with Florean again, when she had noticed that the roses were changing colors. Every time she thought to look, they had changed again, between white and red. There was magic heavy in the air around her that made her skin tingle and the hairs on the back of her neck raise. She knew who was doing this, instinctively — it was that man again.  
  
And, though she wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone else, she wanted to see him again.  
  
She strongly felt that the roses changing color had been a signal, a message — he was saying he wanted to see her too. But by then, the daydream allotted time was up, and she had to wake up.  
  
She resolved to find him on the fourth night.  
  
During the day, she was exhausted, but emotionally energized. She noticed that though there were bags underneath her eyes, her skin glowed with happiness. She was getting something just for her, finally, and she had never imagined how satisfying it would be.  
  
On top of that, she found herself no longer pining for Ron quite so much. When he and Lavender were snogging in the common room, for all to see, she was quite happy to plop down next to them and begin to read.  
  
The thing was, the man in the top hat had seen her. And though she knew, deep down, that he was only a figment of her imagination, for right now it was nice to think of a man who was not Ron — who was so unlike Ron in so many ways, from the angles of his lovely hands and kissable jaw to the sensuous purr of his deep voice. Instinctively, she knew he was powerful, too, and of course, this was not a surprise. She longed for a man who could potentially best her, who could (finally) present a challenge for her.  
  
Ron was only a challenge because of his idiocy, she snidely noted. It was like dealing with a mentally subnormal toddler, really. With this cruel but smug thought in mind, she happily left everyone entirely mystified with her sudden contentedness.  
  
On the fourth night, she arrived in dreamland looking slightly different, she realized. She was, for whatever reason, garbed in a blue dress with stockings and black shoes. She looked ridiculous, but it didn’t matter.  
  
She was going to see him tonight — she had to.  
  
As tempting as it was to torment Bellatrix or Malfoy (or even Umbridge, whom she had left Lavender the Pig in the care of), she bypassed all of these temptations tonight and hurried over to the Forbidden Forest’s edge. She paused before the bramble and drew in a deep, calming breath, as her excitement nearly took over.  
  
She hurtled into the Forest, eyes and ears strained for some sign of her man. It was in a clearing, lit by a Cheshire Cat moon, that she found him seated at a long table.  
  
“So,” he greeted, entirely unsurprised to see her there, “will you have tea with me at last?”  
  
“Of course,” she replied, breathless from her running, as she hurried to the table. She only noticed now that on the far end of the clearing, leaning against a tree, was an enormous mirror. Through the looking-glass, then, she thought with some amusement, before taking a seat adjacent to the top-hat moon-cat man. “So how can you turn into the moon, anyway?” she asked eagerly, as he poured her some tea. She waited for him to say he’d missed her, as she had missed him, and this was her bloody day dream so she ought to at least get what she wanted. . . But the man only fixed her with a chillingly calculated stare.  
  
“Magic,” he said flatly, as though speaking to a slug. Hermione glowered.  
  
“Yes, but what’s the spell,” she pressed, leaning forward. The man, in turn, leaned back, earning another glare from Hermione.  
  
This wasn’t going at all how she had wanted it to.  
  
“Mu — Hermione, darling, I invited you here because there is something only you can do for me, and I very much want you to do it,” he began in a honeyed voice, his gaze suddenly warming as he leant forward, covering her hand with his. His was as icy as his gaze had been, that first night, and a prickle of fear began to sear in between all of the desire she was feeling for him.  
  
He had been about to call her ‘Mudblood.’  
  
“And what would that be?” she asked carefully, not bothering to point out that he had changed the subject and not answered her question. She despised when people didn’t answer her questions, but it would have to wait for now. There was something terribly, horrifically, compelling about his gaze now. She felt forced to look, too scared to look away — but why? And yet within that fear was that heady lust, a kind of lust she had never before felt.  
  
“I need you,” he continued, his cool thumb ghosting over her knuckles in an effigy of tenderness, “to look in the mirror for me.”  
  
Don’t look in the mirror. She did not know why this thought so automatically came to her, but there it was: don’t look in the mirror.  
  
“I thought you wanted to have tea instead,” she said in a shaky voice, holding up the painted china teapot demonstratively. The man’s lovely eyes narrowed before he quickly smoothed his features over. All the same, she could feel his powerful magic, alluring in its sheer strength, sparking dangerously in the air around her.  
  
“Why don’t you look in the mirror first? Check your hair, whatever it is girls like to do when they look at themselves,” he cooed, tilting his head to the side and leaning closer, so that she could smell the tempting scent of his skin. She inhaled deeply before pulling away.  
  
Why can’t I look in the mirror? Every instinct was screaming at her to run, run away from the mirror, but her mind wondered: why? This was just a daydream. Why bother running from her own mind?  
  
“. . . Alright,” she conceded finally, pushing away from the table. The gleam of victory in the man’s eyes was chilling, and only added to her misgivings about this, but she instead took a strong stride towards the mirror. The man rose to his feet behind her, barely concealing his eagerness as he followed her towards the looking-glass.  
  
At first, she simply saw her reflection, turned pale silver from the moonlight streaming in through the leaves. Then, her vision focused as though in slow motion, and the top-hat moon-cat man was gone.  
  
“Oh, I forgot,” came a high, cold voice, “I never properly introduced myself. My given name is Tom.”  
  
In his place was, unmistakably, Lord Voldemort.  
  
  


END

****  
  
  



End file.
